Pharmaceutical company buys drug used to treat life-threatening infections; raises price from $13.50 - Polidicks

[QUOTE=JustExtreme;48732760]A very large proportion is already publicly funded[/QUOTE] Many new ground breaking drugs and drug administration/ manufacture systems can be traced back to public research in universities. Usually from PhD students (a friend of mine is looking into the administration of cancer fighting drugs using nano-particles or something equally science) with no real backing from private investors because once the research is out there it's pretty much open season to use it as a "basis" for your implementation. The only real costs will be the (significantly lessened) R&D for their version and the trialling which is understandably complex and time consuming.

[QUOTE=Levithan;48732607]We should kill the rich and use their meat to feed the poor[/QUOTE] Or, you know, we could tax them at 99% at the highest tax bracket, and use their endless piles of money to help the poor. Seriously, the tax bracketing system is a good system. Say if we taxed billionaires at 99% above $1Bn, including investments and assets, we could raise a ton of money. Even if you only taxed at 50% above $500M, you could eliminate the national debt and fully fund all of our social programs in a few years. It's a real shame we don't use the tax system more thoroughly.

[QUOTE=VinLAURiA;48732707]Seriously, has that notion [i]ever[/i] worked? If there's something the past few decades have told us, it's that an unregulated market naturally tends to all the money gravitating towards a few snowballing entities. Zipf and all that.[/QUOTE] There's a plus though, it changes easily and there are multiple alternatives. It would be worse if there was a price hike like this under federal law.

Yet another example of how free market health care is actually the opposite. If someone hikes up the price of a new television 55 times what it was the previous day, you aren't going to buy the television. Free (ish) market. If someone hikes up the price of the drugs you need to continue living 55 times what it was the previous day, you are still going to do whatever possible to buy that drug. Not a free market. When you hold a gun to someone's head and tell them to pay or die, it isn't a free market. Meanwhile if you nationalize healthcare, then the government negotiates on your behalf. It engages in free market practices and forces the price down. Socialized medicine has more in common with capitalism than our current system.

[QUOTE=VinLAURiA;48731868]Capitalism, ladies and gentlemen. Capitalism and commercialized science.[/QUOTE] But the invisible hand will fix it :ohno:

Lots of misinformation and untruths flying around here. Let me clear this up. Here's what happened. The drug in question, pyrimethamine (trade name Daraprim), was first approved by the FDA in 1953 for the treatment of various protozoal infections, in particular toxoplasmosis. This drug was originally developed and marketed by Burroughs Wellcome (US Patent No. 2576939, if you're so interested). You may know them better today as GlaxoSmithKline, a company formed after a long series of mergers and acquisitions. In 2010, a company called CorePharma bought the US marketing rights to the drug, selling it under its subsidiary Amedra Pharmaceuticals. In October last year, another company known as Impax Laboratories acquired CorePharma and its affiliated companies. In August this year, Impax sold the US marketing rights of Daraprim to Turing Pharmaceuticals, the company in contention here. Turing then proceeded to raise the price of Daraprim, citing untapped profitability and claiming that they would use this added revenue to fund further research into newer toxoplasmosis treatments. Note that this isn't the first time that Daraprim's price has been jacked up. For years, GSK has been selling this drug for $1 a pill. CorePharma, the company that first acquired the drug from GSK, started increasing the price soon after it acquired it. According to IMS Health, which tracks prescriptions, sales of the drug jumped from $667,000 in 2010 to $6.3 million in 2011, even as prescriptions held steady at about 12,700. That corresponds to a roughly 10-fold increase in price. In 2014, after further price increases, sales were $9.9 million, even though the number of prescriptions shrank to 8,821. This latest price jump by Turing is shocking partially because its so sudden, but honestly, people are only getting angry about it because mainstream news outlets actually picked it up. Now one will rightly ask why Turing are allowed to do such a thing in the first place, considering how this is a generic drug that anyone can manufacture. They could be doing one of two things here: A. They could be abusing the FDA approvals process. In the US, drugs are subject to regulation by the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. This act was first enacted in 1938 and required manufacturers to prove that their drugs were safe. Prior to this, drugs were only required to meet certain standards of purity and strength (regulated by the Pure Food and Drug act of 1906). The FFDCA act was later amended in 1962 to require drugs to be effective as well. Of course, there were plenty of new drugs invented before 1938, and between 1938 and 1962. These drugs are technically unapproved, as they had not been subject to the same tests that current drugs must go through, but due to an extensive history of use, the FDA allowed their sale to continue, subject to certain conditions. The FDA is now trying to get these drugs approved under current regulations by incentivising companies to undertake the approvals process for these drugs by running clinical trials on them. They do this by granting marketing exclusivity for a particular drug to the companies that carry out this process, something usually only reserved for new drugs. Once the company has gotten approval for the drug through this process, they then proceed to jack up the price many-fold. This tactic has been used before, most famously for colchicine ([url="http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/04/14/colchicines_price_goes_through_the_roof"]URL Pharma in 2010[/url]) and Makena ([url="http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2011/03/11/makenas_price_what_to_do"]KV Pharmaceutical in 2011[/url]). B. They could be abusing the FDA's controlled distribution procedures. In the US, generics are regulated by the FDA as well. In order to be marketed as a generic alternative to an already-existing drug, the manufacturer must demonstrate to the FDA that their generic drug does exactly the same thing as the already-existing drug, something called bioequivalence. However, to do this, they have to get a sample of the existing drug in the first place. Now, the FDA also has this thing called Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) that outlines the risks that each drug has and the measures needed to mitigate those risks. Turing could easily deny generic manufacturers samples of their drug by claiming that the REMS for Daraprim mean that they cannot freely distribute the drug. In this case, it seems that Turing has taken the latter route. Indeed, their CEO, Martin Shkreli, has done this before in another startup, Retrophin. In that case, they acquired the marketing rights to a drug known as tiopronin (trade name Thiola), and increased the price 20 times. Their declared strategy was to take the drug into closed distribution to limit its availability to other generic manufacturers by abusing the REMS system outlined above. It is worth noting that Shkreli was later fired by the board of directors due to [url="http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-10-02/biotech-company-retrophin-fired-ceo-because-of-stock-irregularities"]stock irregularities[/url]. Those of you criticising this as an example of price gouging from pharmaceutical companies could do well to learn about the drug development process. The reason why patents exist and the reason why drug companies are granted exclusive marketing rights to drugs that they invent is because the drug development process is [i]expensive as hell[/i]. You start with hundreds of thousands to millions of compounds, and then you literally throw everything at a wall until something sticks (read: you conduct bioassays of those hundreds of thousands of compounds to narrow down which ones show some effectiveness against a certain drug target). After that, you take the few hundred that show some promise and inject them into mice or rats or some other animal model to see what happens. The few dozen that don't kill the rats outright are then tested in further animal models for effectiveness. After this stage you're usually left with one or two drug candidates that you then start to optimise for efficacy. Finally, after months of testing, you are ready to submit the drug to the FDA for approval. For human testing. This is where the fun part begins. This testing comes in three phases. Phase I determines safety in humans. This could go smoothly, or it could end in abject horror, as it did in the case of [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGN1412"]TGN1412[/url], where the 6 men they tested it on ended up in the hospital due to a severe reaction to the drug despite it having shown almost no side effects in animal testing (it made rats pee a bit more, and dogs' hearts beat a bit faster). If the drug passes Phase I, it then proceeds to Phase II, where the efficacy of the drug is tested in a small group of patients. If the drug shows promise there, it will then proceed to a Phase III study, which is a far more rigorous study that determines efficacy in a large group of patients. The last two phases are often the most harrowing, because at this point, years will have been spent on developing the drug, and hundreds of millions poured in. It is hard to say how many compounds fail before Phase I trials even start, because most companies don't release data on those failures. Suffice to say, it is a dismally high rate. However, once it has entered a Phase I trial, a drug has a [url="http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v32/n1/full/nbt.2786.html"]roughly 10% chance[/url] of being ultimately approved. In other words, for every drug that makes it into the market, nine others fail during human trials. Keep in mind that each trial costs an enormous sum of money to run, since you need to pay the scientists, the doctors, and the patients taking part in the trial, and that each trial usually lasts for years. Pharmaceutical companies [i]need[/i] to know that they can recoup all this money poured into R&D when they finally hit paydirt, and this guarantee is provided to them in the form of a patent that says that they have exclusive marketing rights for the drug they created for a certain number of years. If this guarantee wasn't there, no one will be willing to undertake such research. Of course, all that is irrelevant in this case, because Turing isn't actually doing any R&D of their own. Not for Daraprim, at least. All they are doing here is simple, immoral rent-seeking that exploits loopholes in current regulation to earn obscene profits. What you are feeling, on reading this article, is anger. Righteous anger. However, it will serve us all well to direct this anger at the right places, rather than slamming the pharmaceutical industry as a whole. Sensational examples like Turing are an easy target, but the truth is most pharmaceutical companies do indeed develop useful drugs that save lives, albeit at a high cost. Those of you slamming the free market system are completely off the mark. The pharmaceutical industry is about as far from a free market as you could possibly get. It is steeped in government regulation, and for very good reasons. If the drug market was truly a free market, we would be back in the good old days where radium was marketed as a cure-all, and literal snake oil was peddled to the masses. So please, do feel outraged. But be outraged at the right things.

Well shit, i could not even imagine him going to bed thinking like "Yep, my price increase made it for some people impossible to get decent treatment and therefor are in critical danger of death. All thanks to me!"

And on that note; The united states is not even a real country anymore. It is literally a patchwork of ancient decrees, half-solutions, inefficiencies, bureaucracy and utter corruption. Nobody can effectively break it down, so nobody can control it. You have made one big tangle of laws and regulations that one can hardly even approach legislatively, even when this manmade monster tramples people's lives, all one can really do is give it another patch. So youre fucked.

Go ahead and raise the price of Penicillin or Morphine by that percentage, and see what it does to your economy. From over here it seems like Big Pharma hates fucking everyone.

Would it be optimistic to say that companies might spring up that just copy the same drugs they've raised the price by more than 100% and start producing them illegally because fuck this guy and anyone like them, it's bullshit?

You can listen to his reasoning here (spoilers: it's shit): [url]http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-09-21/why-turing-increased-price-of-daraprim-over-500-[/url]

[url]http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-09-21/why-turing-increased-price-of-daraprim-over-500-[/url] Interview with him on it, suggest watching all the way through. His justifications seem very sketchy, and I dont understand how it works in that he says if people can't afford it then they will give it away for free. *edit* ninja'd [QUOTE=Chopstick;48733333]Would it be optimistic to say that companies might spring up that just copy the same drugs they've raised the price by more than 100% and start producing them illegally because fuck this guy and anyone like them, it's bullshit?[/QUOTE] Like said above they don't even need to product them illegally, I think they only own the brand name as patents on drugs don't last forever, so other companies could technically produce generic versions of the drug.

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;48733398]You can listen to his reasoning here (spoilers: it's shit): [url]http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-09-21/why-turing-increased-price-of-daraprim-over-500-[/url][/QUOTE] Why is it shit?

I really hope this guy develops a terminal illness so he can feel what it's like to be put into such a helpless situation. Cunt.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0P4r9fcy1o[/media] I get his message, understand the logic, and hope for the best with it.... But this dude looks arrogant as hell. Seriously nothing but a shit-eating grin

[QUOTE=Headhumpy;48733459]Why is it shit?[/QUOTE] "People were allowed to survive just by paying a bit over $1000, and we kinda thought we could gouge people for way more money than that" Considering no further research is really needed on that particular drug, they're just fucking people over. Maybe they'll develop a new cure, but will it be as cost effective as the old drug at all? He's basically talking about it like it's crowdfunding, problem is no one will receive that new product for anywhere near free - and will they drop the price on the old drug afterwards? Of course not, otherwise no one would buy the new one. Medicine should be getting cheaper, not more expensive, especially when it's for no good reason. Edit: If the drug wasn't profitable, sure they'd have to raise the price. Raising it from $13.5 to $750 is [I]not[/I] appropriate.

That's capitalism in a nutshell. [video=youtube;5fc52FlDAm0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fc52FlDAm0&[/video]

[QUOTE=Headhumpy;48733459]Why is it shit?[/QUOTE] He's claiming that the drug was under-priced, that they need more money to develop a more "modern medicine" for when the disease evolves, and that "no one's cared about this illness" until they got their hands on the drug. Yet, it's such an important drug that the World Health Organization has put it in their [url=http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/93142/1/EML_18_eng.pdf?ua=1]List of Essential Medicines[/url] for a basic health system. He's raking in money for a decades old drug that works and is affordable, but is trying to develop multiple new drugs that we aren't even sure are necessary.

[QUOTE=Cushie;48733404][url]http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-09-21/why-turing-increased-price-of-daraprim-over-500-[/url]Like said above they don't even need to product them illegally, I think they only own the brand name as patents on drugs don't last forever, so other companies could technically produce generic versions of the drug.[/QUOTE] Yep, pretty much. The only drug that generally doesn't get a generic is insulin because it's just too damn expensive to produce. And some opiates are delayed/stopped from going generic for the sake of flooding the market with cheap opiates.

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;48733545]"People were allowed to survive just by paying a bit over $1000, and we kinda thought we could gouge people for way more money than that" Considering no further research is really needed on that particular drug, they're just fucking people over. Maybe they'll develop a new cure, but will it be as cost effective as the old drug at all? He's basically talking about it like it's crowdfunding, problem is no one will receive that new product for anywhere near free - and will they drop the price on the old drug afterwards? Of course not, otherwise no one would buy the new one. Medicine should be getting cheaper, not more expensive, especially when it's for no good reason.[/QUOTE] He does have a point that new drugs might help, but his reasoning that current patients should support those costs is a bit warped. There are plenty of other sources of funding that are more effective and less immoral than his current strategy (traditional VC funding, for one). Furthermore, it's not even guaranteed that the drugs that his company are developing will work. [url="http://www.turingpharma.com/pipeline"]Their website[/url] states that two drugs are currently under development, one in the preclinical stage and one in Phase II trials. That doesn't look terribly promising to me. I should also point out that his point on supporting generics is an outright lie, considering his entire business strategy in acquiring pyrimethamine was to bring it under closed distribution. I detailed how that works in my post above. You can find out more about pyrimethamine's closed distribution [url="http://www.pharmacytimes.com/contributor/monica-v-golik-mahoney-pharmd-bcps-aq-id/2015/07/new-pyrimethamine-dispensing-program-what-pharmacists-should-know"]here[/url].

So..why the hell are pharmaceutical companies allowed to do this in the first place? Should be illegal.

[QUOTE=lilguy;48733579]He's claiming that the drug was under-priced, that they need more money to develop a more "modern medicine" for when the disease evolves, and that "no one's cared about this illness" until they got their hands on the drug. Yet, it's such an important drug that the World Health Organization has put it in their [url=http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/93142/1/EML_18_eng.pdf?ua=1]List of Essential Medicines[/url] for a basic health system. He's raking in money for a decades old drug that works and is affordable, but is trying to develop multiple new drugs that we aren't even sure are necessary.[/QUOTE] A lot of WHO Essential Medicines aren't what we would call cutting edge. As an analogy, you would say that rice is essential, but wagyu beef isn't. His point regarding side effects and drug resistance is also valid.

[QUOTE=Headhumpy;48733618]He does have a point that new drugs might help, but his reasoning that current patients should support those costs is a bit warped. There are plenty of other sources of funding that are more effective and less immoral than his current strategy (traditional VC funding, for one). Furthermore, it's not even guaranteed that the drugs that his company are developing will work. [url="http://www.turingpharma.com/pipeline"]Their website[/url] states that two drugs are currently under development, one in the preclinical stage and one in Phase II trials. That doesn't look terribly promising to me. I should also point out that his point on supporting generics is an outright lie, considering his entire business strategy in acquiring pyrimethamine was to bring it under closed distribution. I detailed how that works in my post above. You can find out more about pyrimethamine's closed distribution [url="http://www.pharmacytimes.com/contributor/monica-v-golik-mahoney-pharmd-bcps-aq-id/2015/07/new-pyrimethamine-dispensing-program-what-pharmacists-should-know"]here[/url].[/QUOTE] I did read your post, it was very informative. Now where do we actually disagree? Maybe just in the wording department?

[QUOTE=Dougz;48731847] [t]http://i.imgur.com/PopeduL.png[/t][/QUOTE] Socialism is the future my friend. People make choices and they choose to do away with this type of selfishness.

What a piece of human trash. No words.

[QUOTE=Code3Response;48733520] I get his message, understand the logic, and hope for the best with it.... But this dude looks arrogant as hell. Seriously nothing but a shit-eating grin[/QUOTE] Broken logic. Pill is decades old and he did not invent it. R&D costs: No Distribution: 1000% increase in price? Production: Cheap to produce.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48731957]Seems more like shitty regulation than capitalism/commercialized science. I mean price increases on the order of 5,500% aren't exactly driven by competition. Seems more like an asshole who found something to exploit and there are poor legal safeguards in place.[/QUOTE] Untrue. This issue has been delineated very thoroughly; the only time prices like this are justified is during development. This drug is finalized and has been for half a century. regulation has nothing to do with it. This is naked and unadulterated greed. Someone should be beating this man within an inch of his life. There are no alternatives because there never needed to be.

[QUOTE=Headhumpy;48733188]So please, do feel outraged. But be outraged at the right things.[/QUOTE] Assuming everything you've said here is correct, and I see no reason why it wouldn't be, then I'm not sure how anyone in their right mind can say that this is an effect of capitalism. Every single step of this process either includes government regulation, or is caused directly by the regulation. It's also good to note that being for free market capitalism isn't the same things as being for corporations over anyone else. The point is that a free market supporter believes that the free market is a better way to deal with this kind of problem than government regulation, which always lead to unintended consequences and/or doing even solve the original problem.

[QUOTE=spazthemax;48731891]This is sickening. Is it "liberal" to think people shouldnt be saddled with lifelong debt because they get sick, or is it just fucking moral decency?[/QUOTE] there are people who are born with life-long conditions that they need medicine for constantly, the cost of medicine for them is literally life or death, and yet somehow this drug is insanely expensive

[QUOTE=sgman91;48733902]Every single step of this process either includes government regulation, or is caused directly by the regulation.[/QUOTE] How about fixing regulation instead of abolishing it (I assume you're of this position)?